Vacuum cleaning devices, such as upright and canister vacuum cleaners, wet extractors, stick vacuums, electric brooms and other devices, are in widespread use as tools to clean floors, upholstery, stairs, and other surfaces. Vacuum cleaners typically are expected to operate on various different floor surfaces, such as carpets, hardwood, tiles, and so on. Furthermore, vacuum cleaners typically are expected to be able to remove debris having a wide variety of physical shapes and properties. The debris found in a typical household can include wet substances (e.g., mud and water-soaked hair or dirt), dry particles (e.g., dust and lint), fibers (e.g., hair and carpet fibers) and food particles (e.g., crumbs, popcorn kernels, popped popcorn). Of course, many other kinds of debris could be found in a home. As used herein, terms such as “dirt,” “debris” and so on are intended to cover anything that might be desired to be removed from a surface, and are not intended to limit the description or scope of the disclosure in any way.
Manufacturers have endeavored to create vacuum cleaners that can pick up many different kinds of debris from many different floor surfaces. For example, some vacuum cleaners, such as the device shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,042, use variable-height suction inlets that are intended to move close to bare floors, and further away from carpeted floors, which is expected to improve cleaning performance on both surfaces. Such devices may include a brushroll cutoff mechanism to turn off the rotating brush when the device is in the bare floor cleaning position, as it has been found that on bare floors a brush can strike particles and project them away from the suction inlet, resulting in decreased cleaning performance. Other vacuum cleaners include the device shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,052,863, which has a simple scraper blade located behind the suction inlet which helps prevent dirt from being missed as the inlet is moved forward across a surface, and helps prevent the brushroll from casting away particles. Another vacuum cleaner, shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,317,784, includes a movable skirt-like brush that lowers towards the floor when the suction inlet is lowered towards a bare floor cleaning position. The foregoing references are incorporated herein by reference.
Prior efforts to provide improved cleaning on various surfaces have not necessarily resulted in a universal cleaning solution that is optimized for all cleaning surfaces. Such prior devices also may be excessively expensive to implement, complicated to use, or not suitable for the dirty environment in which vacuum cleaners operate. It is believed that there still exists a need for improved or alternative vacuum cleaner suction inlet designs.